Saturday, December 14, 2013

Healthcare D-Day or Dunkirk

Reading over my last few posts, one would think I hated our President. I apologize for giving that impression. I don't. I donated money to his primary campaign, wept at the thought of Martin Luther King, Jr's dream come true, and receive his daily emails. He and I went to law school together (for one brief year--we never met). I pray for him as sincerely as I have ever prayed for any president, and that's a lot.

But I have been pretty hard on him lately, for a reason. He turned something as big as D-Day into the Bay of Pigs. When General Eisenhower gave the orders to invade Europe, he wrote a speech to give if things went badly. President Obama didn't write that speech. He borrowed one from Sergeant Schultz:

"I was not informed directly that the website would not be working the way it was supposed to. I’m accused of a lot of things. I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying this is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity a week before the website opens if I thought that it wasn’t going to work," Mr. Obama said during a press conference at the White House. "Clearly we, and I, did not have enough awareness about the problems with the website."

Two weeks before the new year, there is every reason to believe that the net result of all this will leave millions of previously insured Americans exposed to physical and financial ruin. Instead of D-Day, where the forces of freedom pushed tyranny back across a continent, we are re-enacting the Battle of Dunkirk, where the Allied armies lay trapped between Hitler's devils and the deep blue sea.

The soldiers trapped at Dunkirk were not saved by the invincible British Navy (because big ships couldn't get close enough to the beach), but by the astounding courage, ingenuity and sacrifice of ordinary Britons along the southern coast of England. If you don't know the story, I cannot do it justice here. Read "The Snow Goose," by Paul Gallico--a lovely little story that moves me to tears as I type.

There are millions of Americans "trapped on the beach" right now, and tens of millions more to come. As of this moment, there is no realistic hope that Republicans and Democrats will decide to paper over their differences to stop the suffering--the political war that got us into this situation is raging hotter than ever, and there is no reason to think it will be over before January, 2017, when a new President takes office. Between now and then, the best hope our suffering neighbors has will come from us.

That's why I'm promoting the Federal Health Union Act of 2014--a bill that does not replace or repeal the Act Formerly Known as Obamacare. It doesn't promise affordable care for all Americans--but it does offer affordable care for more Americans. It's a bill that lets neighbors help out neighbors until big business and big government can get their act together.

For more information on the FHUA, click here. There's one man in Washington who could sponsor this bill and make it happen. If he agrees to take a look at it, I'll let you know. Until then, may God help those who can't help themselves tonight.